A California mother is recovering from more than 150 lacerations and puncture wounds across her body after being attacked by a pack of stray dogs while out for a walk. Dorrie Reyes was walking along a levee in Stockton on April 23 when she was surrounded by seven to nine stray dogs, including German shepherds and mixed breeds, according to a GoFundMe organized by her family. Just moments before the scene turned violent, Reyes filmed the dogs on her phone while shouting for help. As the animals mauled her, a nearby couple heard her cries and rushed in, managing to drive the dogs away, her son Ronnie said. “The good Samaritan was, as far as I know, afraid of dogs, but he still came out to help my mom,” Ronnie Reyes told 9News, wiping away tears, adding his family is thankful to the couple because his mother’s injuries “could’ve been much worse.” Dorrie Reyes was rushed to the hospital with 150 to 200 lacerations and puncture wounds across her arms, legs, face, head and neck. She spent six hours in the operating theater and lost a significant amount of blood, according to the GoFundMe.
I go hiking a lot and I always carry pepper spray and a knife, specifically for dogs. My dog is usually with me and I have no qualms with pepper spraying an aggressive dog, or even hitting mine in the mix, to save his or my life. I hadn’t even considered strays, I’m mainly worried about the assholes who let their dogs off leash. That number of strays is a whole other nightmare scenario.
I feel like it should be a requirement that articles like this include a map of where the incident occurred as assistance to others in the area. “Stockton levee” is super broad.
“The incident happened somewhere between the states of Missouri and Louisiana on the banks of a river”
Reading this I knew it wasn’t in any Blue state. If you haven’t had the chance to live in some of our poorest counties in America, roaming dog packs sounds outlandish. The poorest people in third world countries have it better than the poorest in Louisiana. Not a Joke.
I’m not arguing with you or anything, I just want to relay my experience with something like this. I was raised around big dogs, and actually made a living training them for a few years(not just big dogs, but chihuahuas get a bad rap because they can be incredibly cool too). So I’m used to dealing with all sorts of behavioral levels. My mom adopted a “pot cake” dog from the Caribbean, which is essentially a street dog. My first time visiting after they adopted her, she was sweet enough when Mom was around. But I wanted to sleep in after partying with friends. My mom left me her car to visit my old haunts and explore new areas while she was at work.
The Caribbean pot cake dog was laying in between my air mattress and the front door. She growled as I got closer and then nipped at my shoe. I understood she is male aggressive and has trauma with being kicked simply by knowing her background. So I assertively raised my voice, but didn’t yell, and took one step backwards and stopped looking directly at her. It took maybe 30 seconds for her to realize what was going on, and she sheepishly got out of the way. My only negative experience with this formerly stray dog who obviously got kicked fairly often.
Every time I’ve visited since, she had been there most adorable love bug. I cannot sleep in the living room cause she will pop the air mattress trying to crawl up and lay next to me, and I am never alone on the couch. I don’t know what I was getting at here, maybe I just wanted to talk about her. But the other dude was right, I was making a joke and it makes me feel bad that someone downvoted you for not catching it. Don’t worry though homie, I got you back on the better side of zero.
Stockton is in California. The person above was making a joke.
I’m amazed at how rarely we hear of instances like this; I’m glad it didn’t turn deadly. I hope the gofundme covers the medical bills; the alternative is suing the city for not preemptively taking care of the problem dogs.
I’ve never seen truly stray dogs (not just lost) in the US. It’s so foreign to me when I see them in every other country I visit
It’s rare, but you just have to hit the right area. I see them a few times a week in certain areas of my large metroplex. What’s unnerving is how quickly they can come up on you… It’s less than five seconds for a pack to come around the corner of a house and surround you, and if you scare them off they’re gone just as quickly. They also tend to be active just after sundown, so unless you’re making a point of walking around after dark, you’d miss them.
Idk where you live and I don’t mean this to be rude but it probably is. Once you have packs of vicious roaming dogs that’s a failed state. Like keeping animals from attacking your citizenry is something stone age people worried about and we are failing at it in 2026? Wild
Don’t they have “village dogs” in the US ? Basically in very rural areas here (France) they will sometimes have stray dogs that roam around a village and that the inhabitants tolerate, usually at least providing water for them. I’ve never heard of any serious attack from them here but I’m sure they can happen.
We don’t have villages and we do have animal control so generally no.
Never seen that in the USwith dogs, but I have seen it with cats. Sometimes an area will just have a cat that will bop around the neighborhood begging for food. A bar I frequented in my 20s had an outdoor seating area and I always enjoyed when the neighborhood cat swung by for a visit.
Yeah it’s even more common with cats over here. Even happens in big cities sometimes.
Some even get full vet care
Not in my experience. I think it’s a bit of an American TV trope from the 1950s, but I don’t know if those were really feral dogs or just free-roam farm dogs and such. I’ve always had neighborhood feral cats around though. Feral dogs are often captured in cities and suburbs and given to shelters. Or euthanized. I guess we’re afraid of getting attacked. Cats, on the other hand, aren’t such a risk to humans and are tolerated, despite being atrocious for local ecosystems.
Meanwhile, I just had an encounter with an escaped husky and I was genuinely afraid. I’m not afraid of dogs, but I had to knock on its owner’s door and it started darting around, getting between me and the door, and staying quiet - not actually showing any signs of aggression in face/tail/voice. Eerie.
My ex got a “rescue dog” from a humane society. She got him and it was rough but she said she was making progress. The first time I met the dog, I knew something was off. That dog was not meant to be a family dog. It was clearly either pure bred or close to it chocolate lab. But that dog didn’t have a lab personality. I told her to ask more about the dogs background and it turned out that they didn’t know, other than it was found by the river in the city and it wasn’t tagged. That raised a bunch of red flags, especially for a lab that wasn’t underweight. We broke up and I later found out she gave up and the dog went to a farm. This was in college lol so it didn’t “go to the farm”. I’m also leaving a lot out of that story but that dog was a nightmare.
TL;DR scary stray dogs absolutely exist in the US. Even in the middle of the country, and even in dogs that you wouldn’t expect based on breed.
I’m not saying they don’t exist, just that in all my travels across the US, rural metro and suburban, I’ve never see multiple stray dogs. It’s rare I see a singular stray dog, at that. Not like other countries where I see them right outside the airport. All to say this story sounds crazy to me, coming out of regular California. But maybe I’ve just never been there to see it
it’s common in the country but you are right in that they ate not truly stray/feral
it’s multiple owners letting their dogs roam without a fence
Or people who can’t properly care for a dog anymore and think the dog has a better survival chance roaming then taking it to the shelter.
You see them a lot on native American reservations.
I was in a remote part of Florida once and I would hear wild packs of dogs in the night. Kinda scary.
Those were just swamp people.
Wrong part of florida
A pack of Florida men.
Yeah same here… Lived here my whole life and I’ve never seen a single stray dog.
What he fuck is going on in Stockton right now?
feral dogs are kind uncommon compared to cats. we encountered them once going through our trash, they were aggressive but not bitey, i doubt they had owners, since it was a mix of different dog breeds.
California has a lot of coyotes
I didn’t even know that area had packs of stray dogs!!
Very sad. There are way too many dogs and cats out there :(
we were almost mobbed by a pack of stray dogs once rummaging through our garbage bins. they get pretty aggressive.
Stockton CA is known for tweekers. These must be tweeker dogs
Someone is going out there to put them all down so this doesn’t happen again with a worse outcome?
It’s California. Put them down with what.
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let the dog bit you on the forearm. put your other arm behind its neck. lift with your bit arm and press down with your other arm on the back of their neck.
The dog will stop biting you momentarily.
if you have a bag or purse you can let them bit it and do the same.
Try doing that while a dog is actively biting you and tearing your arm in random directions.
A lot of people here have zero experience or idea of how a dog attack actually works, or how there are long lasting consequences from said attack. In my relatively “lucky” case, I almost lost two fingers, lost wrist movement for approx 1 yr, and to this day 10+ years later, I still have scars on my face/wrist + strange nerve tingles on my fingers.
One dog, good. Two dogs, eh… Three dogs? Less than 20 kilos? Maaaaybe.
7+ with german shepherds? Good luck with that.
I do not have 7-9 arms
Well you need two arms to pull off that little maneuver on one dog so you really need 14-18 arms.
Sounds like a you problem. Get with it jeez /s
Does that work when there are 7-10 dogs like TFA says?
It works about as good as the governments advise about saving money. Just stop eating one meal a day and eat less at the other two.
It kills the dog. Assuming the jaw doesnt lock you then use that dogs corpse to beat the other dogs to death.
In all seriousness. Killing one dog at a time is your best bet until you escape or they run off.
is it a perfect solution? Nope and you will get bit. But its like getting into a knife fight… you will get stabbed no matter what. Accept it and use it to your advantage.
Lots of people getting deported
Are you implying the pack of dogs used to be people’s pets but those people got deported and the dogs have formed packs to survive? Genuinely asking. I am not in a place where lots of immigrants have settled. I do imagine there are lots of pets being completely abandoned as a result of the crime against humanity that is ice raids.
Always carry a flare gun.
In California, wild fires much?
An improvised explosive also works.
I can’t believe people here don’t carry around anti-dog IEDs.
Fucking amateurs.
A flashlight will do under certain circumstances.
That’s why I take one on every walk.
Wait. Oh, a flAshlight. Yeah, that can work, too.
d-does it? Often?
Improvised out of what? Stab your phone battery?
…or just a regular gun because this is America. It’s not a bad idea if you’re gonna be somewhere around wildlife that can kill you.
Or even just a knife because why would anyone go anywhere without a knife? Not even talking about self defence (although in this particular case it probably would have worked).
I just don’t get how a lot of people go about their day without carrying the single most useful tool ever. What if you need to open some clamshell packaging? What if you want to trim a snagging fingernail? What if your shirt has a loose string? What if you get in a car accident and need to cut your seatbelt? What if you get a splinter? What if you need to tighten or loosten a screw? What if you need to trim the rubber boot off an ethernet plug to get it to fit in a poorly designed port? Not having easy access to the worlds most versatile tool just seems like a monumental pain even if you don’t consider the times it could be literally life saving.
Were you ever a scout? Because I’ve never met a grown-up scout who didn’t have a knife on them at all times for practical reasons.
Yup. I always kinda took it for granted growing up but now that I’m an adult it’s really weird to think about how most people just never learned things like basic first aid and such.
It’s such a damn useful skillset, honestly. It’s a crying shame that it was considered a boys’ thing for so long.
My knife is no more than two inches long. Carried similar sized knives for over 30 years.
Only if it’s a revolver or a bolt action rifle.
